The Counterfeit Gentleman (22 page)

“You are good-hearted, Rendel, and I applaud your
Christian sentiments,” Nyesmith said, “but in my opinion,
you are making an error by discounting the danger inherent
in this situation. Ignorance may be bliss, but it is never my
choice when it comes to survival.”

“It is not as if we would have to hire a Bow Street Run
ner,” Townsley explained, beginning once more to ramble
restlessly about the room. “We have sufficient expertise to
ferret out the truth, and even you must agree that it will be safer to know which cousin is the viper and which two are
merely harmless garden snakes.”

“Has it occurred to any of you,” Digory said, “that if you
expose the villain, you will at the same time destroy Miss
Pepperell’s reputation?” He looked from one to the other,
but none of them would meet his eye. “Since I am the one
who is most deeply involved in this affair, I believe it is, in
the end, my decision. And I have decided that nothing will be gained by any attempt to unmask the murderer.”

Valid though it was, Digory’s objection did not end the
discussion. “If you do not wish to have the wicked
cousin brought before the courts,” Fitzhugh said, “and I am inclined to think you are right regarding public knowledge of these things—then there are still innumerable ways that
the offensive gentleman can be permanently ... removed,
shall we say?”

The others agreed, and with growing enthusiasm and
truly fiendish ingenuity they began discussing the possible ways to eliminate the wicked cousin. That everything must
be done in total secrecy was quite to their liking, and that they were proposing to take justice into their own hands
troubled them not at all.

And indeed, what else could Digory have expected?
These five men were not soldiers who had been trained to
carry out commands.

To succeed as a spy—and often success was measured
simply by whether or not one lived to see the next sun
rise—one had to be able to decide for oneself the proper ac
tion to take. An English spy could not have survived in
Napoleon’s France if he had attempted to follow precise in
structions from the War Department in London, no more than Wellington could have won the Battle of Waterloo if
he had allowed Parliament to decide where he should make a stand against the French forces and how he should deploy his troops.

Moreover, a good spy needed to be willing to do what
ever had to be done to reach his goals. And he had to be
able to keep dangerous, even deadly secrets.

In short, a successful espionage agent was not particu
larly good at listening to whoever was in charge, which in
this case was Digory. He, on the other hand, was quite accustomed to having his every order obeyed instantly by his
crew.

His patience at an end, he interrupted the others, saying
firmly, “I repeat, I do not wish anything to be done about
exposing Miss Pepperell’s cousin—or disposing of him, as the case may be.”

As if Digory had not spoken, Townsley asked, “Is any
one here acquainted with the Harcourt brothers? For if I
have ever been introduced to them, I disremember it.”

Digory felt a mounting frustration—quite like Pandora
must have felt after she opened her box. It had been his de
cision to ask Lord Edington for his help, and Edington in
turn had seen fit to involve the other four men. Now there
did not seem to be any way to set limits on their actions.

“If I am not mistaken, they manage to cling precariously
to the fringes of Prinny’s crowd,” Nyesmith said.

“Then that narrows our search to the more disreputable
gambling hells, wouldn’t you say?” Fitzhugh said with a
mocking grin. “And here I had thought the hunting season over. Do you come with us, Cavenaugh? There is bound to be great sport in it.”

Fitzhugh’s tone might be light, but there was a gleam in
his eye that made it abundantly clear to Digory exactly why
he had no control over these men. Despite appearances,
they were not coming to his assistance because of any deep and abiding friendship for him or any true concern for Miss
Pepperell’s well-being.

The war with France had brought together people of di
verse station—people who would normally never have met.
Extraordinary times had indeed called for extraordinary
measures.

But Digory was a realist. The war was over, and he
strongly doubted that any one of these men had spared a thought for him during the several months of peace following Waterloo.

On the other hand, just as he had been bored in his retire
ment, it was quite clear that the others had likewise been
finding life in peacetime England a trifle flat. Lord Eding
ton had summoned them for this meeting, and he had dan
gled the lure of excitement and adventure before them, and
now it was clearly impossible to deflect them from their
self-appointed task.

“I am afraid I must decline,” Cavenaugh said with a
smile. “I am engaged for the opera tomorrow, and my valet
will be most put out with me if I show myself in public
with bags under my eyes. I shall just stay a moment or two
with Matthew and then toddle along home to bed.”

“But if you have good hunting,” Edington said, “send me
a note detailing what you have discovered. Since we do not
normally frequent the same circles, we cannot afford to be
seen together too often, else people will begin to gossip.”

The three younger men promised to keep him informed,
and after a few minutes they departed, leaving only Digory,
Cavenaugh, and their host, whose face was now deeply
lined with the pain he had done his best to conceal while
the others were there.

Wordlessly, Digory filled a glass with port and passed it
over to him, but Edington pushed it aside. “I would be a
drunkard by now, were I to allow myself to seek respite
from pain at the bottom of a bottle.”

“Then we shall not take advantage of your hospitality
any longer, Matthew, but be on our way,” Cavenaugh said
smoothly, “and leave you to the tender ministrations of
your good wife, who doubtless has better means of taking your mind off your bad leg.”

Edington’s protests were a mere formality, and he made
no real attempt to detain them, so it was not long before
Digory found himself walking down the street with Cavenaugh. The moon had already set, and Mayfair was shad
owed and silent. Only a few carriages still rumbled by,
carrying the last of the ton home from their revels.

Despite the dozens of times Lord Cavenaugh had been
on Digory’s yacht, where he had joked and acted as if he
were part of the crew, here in London Digory did not feel at
ease with him. Digory was, in fact, amazed that he’d had
the temerity to ask a peer of the realm to help him deceive other lords and ladies.

But Cavenaugh did not appear to feel the slightest bit of
self-consciousness or constraint. Falling into step beside Digory, he began to speak as if they were equals, which
they were not and never could be.

“How much do you know about the Harcourt brothers?” Cavenaugh asked bluntly.

“Nothing that will help us discover which one is the villain,” Digory said. “Miss Pepperell knows her cousins far
better than I, and even she has no way of knowing which
one has been trying to kill her.”

“But what is this, Rendel? Have your wits gone begging?
We may not know much about two of the brothers, but we
can certainly deduce from his actions a great deal about the
particular Harcourt whom we seek.”

As much as Cavenaugh’s words rankled, Digory could
not deny the truth in what he said. “You are right. To begin with, we know the murderer is completely ruthless.”

“In addition, he is reasonably clever, else he would not
have been able to react so quickly when his plans went
awry,” Cavenaugh pointed out. “We must therefore assume that he has covered his tracks well.”

Three men were coming toward them, obviously foxed from the way they were staggering and holding onto each
other. Cavenaugh waited until they were past and out of
earshot before he continued.

“Our best chance to identify the villain would be if he
were to try again to murder Miss Pepperell. But as you say,
he is not lacking in wits. Once his initial rage is over, he
will realize that such a deed would avail him naught.”

“Which is precisely the point I was trying to make,” Dig
ory retorted. “We need no longer concern ourselves with
him after the wedding. And until the ceremony, which is but
a few short hours away, Miss Pepperell is being quite safely
looked after by Big Davey and Little Davey Veryan.”

“A truly formidable pair if I remember correctly,” Cave
naugh said. “But just what is to prevent Mr. Harcourt from
thinking a bit more? What makes you sure he will ignore
what must be obvious?”

“Obvious?”

“But of course. Once Miss Pepperell is married, then his
only remaining chance to get his hands on her grandfather’s money is to have her marriage declared invalid.”

Digory started out to explain the steps he had undertaken
to ensure that the marriage would be legally binding, but
then he cursed under his breath. Whether the marriage was
legal or not was immaterial. Even though any effort to have the marriage set aside would ultimately fail, the attempt itself would be sufficient to expose his true identity.

And her villainous cousin, having shown himself capable
of cold-blooded murder, would not hesitate to crucify
Bethia in the court of public opinion. Indeed, merely the
whiff of a scandal would be enough to make the ton ostracize Bethia.

“In other words, I need not fear accidentally encounter
ing someone who might recognize me, because the Har
court brothers will spare no expense to discover precisely
who I am and where I came from,” Digory said.

“Unfortunately,” his lordship continued, “we cannot sim
ply assume that whichever cousin protests your marriage is the villain, because all three will have ample reason to rant
and rave and cry foul. And since the murderer was resourceful enough to find and hire two assassins—and I
must point out that such scoundrels do not normally advertise their services with the employment agencies—we can therefore assume that he will also be resourceful enough to hire someone to go to Cornwall and investigate your back
ground. And that means we have very little time to act.”

“Act? Have you thought of some way to prevent this? A
practical plan, not another flight of imagination like the
ones Fitzhugh and his cohorts were offering? For I must
admit I can see no solution to the problem of keeping my identity secret.”

“The simplest thing is usually also the best,” Cavenaugh
said mildly. “Which in this case means we need merely
eliminate all three of the cousins. From what little gossip I
have heard about the Harcourt men, I doubt any of them are
of particular value to society.”

With effort Digory managed to keep his tone civil.
“There is another alternative that you have apparently not
considered.”

“Something that I, in my infinite wisdom, have over
looked? How extraordinary.”

“We would have no problems with any of the cousins if
you were the one to marry Miss Pepperell tomorrow.”

Cavenaugh stopped dead in his tracks and regarded Dig
ory with open amazement, then he burst out laughing. “I
would be on the next boat to Calais if I thought you were serious. No, no, you are the one the fates have chosen to be the sacrificial lamb—the one who must give up his freedom
in this noble cause.”

Digory was not amused. How could he joke about re
ceiving Miss Pepperell’s hand in marriage when he knew
himself to be unworthy of receiving even one of her
smiles?

Shortly thereafter he parted company with Cavenaugh
and continued on alone the short distance to Lady Letitia’s
house. He assumed his elderly friend would have long since
gone to bed, but instead he found her still awake and com
fortably ensconced in front of the fire in the drawing room,
a glass of sherry in her hand.

Sitting down beside her, Digory briefly related the high
points of the meeting with the former spies, concluding
with his fears that the situation was getting desperately out
of hand.

“But my dear boy,” she said with a wicked smile, “what
makes you think you have ever been in control of anything?
You should know by now that I am the master puppeteer in
London. Mine is the hand that jerks the strings and makes
the marionettes perform on cue.”